Day 25 - Olathe, KS to Fayetteville, AR

The last day of our trip we headed to the Kansas City Zoo before trekking back to Arkansas. Overall we were slightly disappointed with the experience, but it definitely had it's high points, not the least of which was this section of the zoo where the kangaroos were not fenced in and viewers could pass freely along the path right next to them.

The elephants were pretty cool, but the best part was the show that the trainers had them put on. The trainers spent a good 10-15 minutes talking the elephants through some tricks and telling the viewers about elephants in general.

Also very cool were the cheetahs that seemed to look right at us as we passed by them.

It was a bitter sweet feeling coming back into Arkansas. We had a great time on our trip, but we were definitely ready to be back home in small-town Arkansas.

Once we got back into the Natural State, we headed down to see Katy's sister before leaving the next morning for a wedding. Overall I don't think the trip could have possibly been any better than it was. There were a few forgettable moments, but I know we wouldn't trade the experiences for anything.

Day 24 - Sioux Falls, SD to Olathe, KS

And the winner of best "Welcome to Our State" sign is........Minnesota! We were only in Minnesota for a few miles, but they had this grandiose sign at the first rest area we saw and we just had to get a picture with it. The thing was, we had to trek through some longish grass and shrubs to get right up to it and we wound up with our worst mosquito bites of the entire trip.

This was pretty much all we saw while in Iowa...yeah...so...that's all we've got to say about Iowa.

We were driving through Omaha at the time the College World Series was going on. I really wanted to drive by Rosenblatt Stadium, not only because we were there during the Series, but also because it was the last College World Series to be played at this famous venue. There were about 17,487,389 people around the stadium...and there was construction...and the zoo was next door, so traffic was slightly hectic to say the least.

The first time it felt like we were getting close to home was when we passed into Missouri.

Day 23 - Wall, SD to Sioux Falls, SD

Day 23 started out with a trip to the famous Wall Drug to look around at the miles and miles of shelving and advertisement they had. It was literally like a shopping mall built out of two-by-fours. There were stores in every category on the complex from kids sections to jewelry to restaurants and designer clothing.

After leaving Wall, we headed across the vast prairie that is South Dakota and made it to De Smet, SD, otherwise known as "The Little Town on the Prairie" from the Laura Ingalls Wilder book series. Katy and I are both fans of the books and decided we had to check it out.

From De Smet, we headed out of town to the Ingalls homestead itself, where we were able to go through a self-guided tour throughout the area using the number system seen here. There was an area that showed a mock sod house and a wood shanty, a rope making station, and an old fashioned well and pump.

In the barn, the keepers of the homestead had a barn cat and some kittens that Katy and I played with for a little while. Not seen here is a solid dark grey kitten that was a rebel and climbed all over the hay bales while the other kittens fed.

The last stop on the tour was a model school house from the 1880s complete with desks and other items from the time period. All the tour participants were able to go in the school and get a "lesson" from the time period and make an "autograph book" as seen in the book series.

Day 22 - Buffalo, WY to Wall, SD

It's been a while since the end of our honeymoon trip (a long while), and we still have't put up pictures from the last 4 days of our trip. Well today is the day! We wanted to update our blog because we are heading on a Spring Break trip to Mammoth Cave, KY next week.

In the morning we headed for South Dakota. The weather was absolutely beautiful by the time we made it to the SD line.

We wanted to stop at the Jewel Cave National Monument, but we did not have the time and we were already going to the Wind Cave later that day.

About 1:30 we arrived at Wind Cave National Park and headed out on the Fairgrounds tour, which was about an hour and a half long.

Wind Cave does not look like the vast majority of other caves in that it has very few large caverns, and mostly small passageways and small rooms. The major feature of the cave was the "boxwork" in the ceilings. You can read more about it here.

We had the America the Beautiful Pass for this trip and therefore we got into all the National Parks for our one time fee. Mount Rushmore tried to get around this by having a $10 "parking fee," so we drove down the road, pulled off and took our pictures without ever having to enter the park.

We saw the beginnings of the Crazy Horse Monument, which will be gigantic when it is done.

Here is the first Wall Drug sign we saw...it was about 40 miles outside of town and there were around 2 per mile until we got into town.

Day 21- Yellowstone NP, WY to Buffalo, WY

There were signs like this wherever there were large concentrations of bison around. It was the last day in the park before I managed to get a picture of one.
Here are the bison that they were warning everyone about. This is actually one of the few times we saw a bunch of bison together. Normally they kept in small groups of about 2-4 and a lot of times were off by themselves. This was the only time we saw any young bison though. The young are the lighter colored ones.

This was only our second moose of our Yellowstone adventure and it was as we were leaving the park at the entrance. He looks like he is looking right at the camera.
We also finally got a picture of Tucker with the sign on our way out of the park.
After having only seen 2 moose the entire 3 days, we saw our third only a couple of miles after seeing the second one. This was actually outside the boundary of Yellowstone. This one appears to be a little younger than the other two we saw.
Western Wyoming had a lot of visible rock formations that were labeled to show how old and during what periods they were formed. We passed by one formation that had been dated during the Pre-Cambrian period at 2.5 billion years old.
This was the Shell Falls that we saw in the Bighorn National Forest on our way through Wyoming. It was very cool and apparently helps supply the west-central Wyoming area with a lot of power and irrigation.
We went up to an elevation of 9,330 feet at Granite Pass before we started to come down again. This was the second highest elevation of our trip after Monarch Pass in Colorado at 11,312 feet.
We stayed the night in Buffalo, WY, a town of about 8,500 people.

Day 20- Yellowstone National Park, WY Upper Loop

This is the Grizzly Bear mother that we saw between our campsite at Indian Creek and Mammoth Hot Spring. She had four cubs, which is very rare.
She seemed to plod along while the cubs bounced around her all the time. We thought that having four cubs probably made her life pretty difficult.
Here Katy got one of the cubs standing up out of the grass.
These are some elk that we saw headed toward Mammoth Hot Spring. This area was the prime place to see elk in the park and they were everywhere, even in amongst the buildings at the Mammoth Village.
This bull elk was the only one that we saw during our visit that had antlers. We had to stand around for a few minutes before he would lift his head up enough for Katy to get a good picture of his antlers. He was actually very close to the road.
We finally saw our first moose on the second day. He was in typical moose form, standing in a shallow pond, grazing on plants in and around the water.
There was a short drive loop where we saw a petrified tree stump that was still standing.

This is Tower Falls near the Roosevelt Lodge on the Northeast side of the park.

Here is me extending my snowball making streak to the 20th of June. I actually had the chance to make one on the first day of summer, but we didn't stop to make one.


Pretty much all day this day, it was cloudy and rainy. Most of our pictures we tried to get in the sunny parts where we actually got out of the car.

Day 19 Yellowstone National Park, WY

This is one of the geysers at the Norris Geyser Basin. Norris is the most active geyser basin in the park.
There were dozens of geysers and hot spring pools in any given place around the Norris geyser basin. This was very cool to see and photograph, but not so good on the nose, with all the hydrogen sulfide gas.
Inside many of the pools you can tell how hot they are by the colors of the bacteria that grow in them. If it is so hot that there are no bacteria, usually over 133 degrees Fahrenheit, the pool will generally be blue like any other water. If you can see shades of red or yellow, the pool is of medium heat, about 100-133 degrees Fahrenheit. If there are any greens, those are thermophillic algae and they only grow in the cooler (relatively) waters at below 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

The chipmunks that we saw out west all had tails. They seemed to like the attention at Yellowstone and often came out for photos.
This is the lower falls at the Artist's Point. We had a great view of the canyon below and of the falls.

The bison that we saw in the park were usually laying down, and didn't seem to mind being close to the roadways.

I managed to get a good picture of Tucker looking out the side window trying to see one of his own kind.
Here is Old Faithful before it erupted. We actually got to the geyser as it was finishing one eruption and had to wait around an hour and a half to see the next one.
And here is Old Faithful at it tallest when it first started to erupt.

The eruption went on for about 2 or 3 minutes until it got back down to a small shower.

This is picture of the Red Spouter, a hot spring that is very muddy with clay and therefore has a red color.


These are some elk that we saw near our campsite area at Indian Creek.